Tuesday, November 14, 2006

UPDATED BELOW - The Latest Bad News from Baghdad: Is Success Not Possible?





Reuters reports today:


Gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms rounded up as many as 100 men at a government building in central Baghdad on Tuesday, in what may be the biggest mass kidnap seen in a city becoming used to such violence.

It bore the hallmarks of sectarian militias operating under cover of the security forces, although senior officials and witnesses differed over how far minority Sunnis were the target.

Other reports place the number of the abducted up to 150. NPR reports that the nation's education minister has shut down colleges and universities, explaining that there is not enough security for the schools to function. It was unclear if this suspension was temporary or longer. But there seems to be the possibility that higher education in Iraq has been killed. The New York Times reports:

A few hours after the incident, a spokesman for the interior ministry went on national television to report that arrest warrants had been issued for five senior police commanders with responsibilities in the area.

Flashback to yesterday, when President Bush was asked by a reporter about his morning meeting with former Secretary of State James Baker and members of Baker's Iraq Study Group, which will soon be releasing a report on possible alternative strategies for the United States in Iraq. Bush said:

And so we had a really good discussion. I'm not sure what the report is going to say. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I believe this: I believe that it's important for us to succeed in Iraq, not only for our security, but for the security of the Middle East, and that I'm looking forward to interesting ideas. In the meantime, General Pete Pace is leading investigations within the Pentagon as to how to reach our goal, which is success, a government which can sustain, govern, and defend itself, and will serve as an ally in this war on terror.

But as today's horrific event shows, success may not be possible. Right now the Bush administration is supporting a Shia-dominated government in Iraq that cannot control Shia death squads. the United States has helped trained a police force that is infiltrated by various militias and riddled with officers loyal to their tribes and sects and not the government. It has trained hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops unable and/or unwilling to fight. A month ago, the interior minister was forced to suspend an entire police brigade of 800 or so officers because it was linked to death squad activity. Was this progress (we're rooting out the bad apples) or another sign of failure (we've trained and equipped murderers)?

There is an ugly possibility the Baker commission has to confront: Iraq may be lost already--at least in the sense that the US government may not be able to stop the sectarian violence that is now the number-one problem (as opposed to violence orchestrated by anti-American jihadists). If that is the case, what recommendation could Baker come up with? More important, could Bush contend with--let alone acknowledge--such a reality?

UPDATE: Apparently, most of those kidnapped today have been released. That is a good sign, though news reports have not yet explained what happened. Still, the general chaos continues. And another sigificant development was overshadowed by this episode. Yesterday, according to the Associated Press,

The U.S. Central Command chief confronted Iraq's prime minister on Monday over how Iraqi forces would halt raging violence and signaled a possible prelude to shifts in American policy on engaging Iran and Syria.

The meeting came as sectarian attacks killed at least 90 people throughout Iraq, 46 of them showing signs of torture. The U.S. military announced the deaths of four additional American soldiers.

Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, sternly warned Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that he must disband Shiite militias and give the United States proof that they were disarmed, according to senior Iraqi government officials with knowledge of what the two men discussed....

In their meeting, Abizaid also asked the Iraqi leader to give the U.S. military a firm timetable for when Iraq's security forces could take full control of the country, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the talks.

There was nothing in this brief story about how Maliki responded or what he--or the United States--could do to stop the sectarian strife. Waiting for Maliki to figure this out hardly seems a strategy for victory.

Posted by David Corn at November 14, 2006 10:48 AM

46 comments:

capt said...

Mr. David Corn,

Is Success Not Possible?

As success is not defined it is not ever going to be possible.

What would victory look like?

Nobody can "win" an occupation, not even the USA with our trillion dollar peace dividend military.

All occupations are faced with resistance. All occupations eventually un-occupy and that is a win for the resistance.

The formula does not change one iota just because the occupation is re-labeled "the war on terror".

No, no way success is possible. We do not even know what success means.


Thanks for all of your work!


Kirk

capt said...

Lieberman won't rule out GOP caucusing



Would make change if he felt uncomfortable


WASHINGTON -- Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut said yesterday that he will caucus with Senate Democrats in the new Congress, but he would not rule out switching to the Republican caucus if he starts to feel uncomfortable among Democrats.

[…]

He was asked about the possibility that he might switch caucuses if he became uncomfortable as Democrats sought to enforce party discipline, particularly if the GOP offered to keep him as a committee chairman and respect his seniority.

"I'm not ruling it out, but I hope I don't get to that point. And, and I must say, and with all respect to the Republicans who supported me in Connecticut, nobody ever said, 'We're doing this because we, we want you to switch over,' " he said.

"I believe that the American people are considering both major political parties to be in a kind of probation, because they're understandably angry that Washington is dominated too much by partisan political games, and not enough by problem-solving and patriotism, which means put the country and your state first," Lieberman said.


More HERE

*****end of clip*****

I think all of the DINO's should just switch. It is better than the charade they play.



capt

capt said...

Republicans Blame Election Losses On Democrats



WASHINGTON, DC—Republican officials are blaming tonight's GOP losses on Democrats, who they claim have engaged in a wide variety of "aggressive, premeditated, anti-Republican campaigns" over the past six-to-18 months. "We have evidence of a well-organized, well-funded series of operations designed specifically to undermine our message, depict our past performance in a negative light, and drive Republicans out of office," said Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, who accused an organization called the Democratic National Committee of spearheading the nationwide effort. "There are reports of television spots, print ads, even volunteers going door-to-door encouraging citizens to vote against us." Acknowledging that the "damage has already been done," Mehlman is seeking a promise from Democrats to never again engage in similar practices.

More HERE

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This time I think the GOPhers are right - it really is the Demorats fault.



capt

eyes_open said...

When the hell is Corn going to start calling it what it is: civil war?! These manipulative word games annoy the hell out of me. "Sectarian violence" is right up there with "police action". Then there was the nightly news reporting the controversy of inmates creating Myspace pages to reach out to the world. When they did a closeup of a profile they focused right on the words "...I am a liberal, vegeterian..."

capt said...

Eye's,

Love the picture!



capt

O'Reilly said...

We win if Iraq has a central government, or even three governemnts, whose foriegn policies favor American interests.

Since a Sunni government (in the South) is more likely to favor Iran, we'd do better with a central government.

It's hard to imagine what coaltition - among the Kurds, Shia amd Sunni - could form to make the central government functional.

capt said...

David Corn absolutely shreds a Bush apologist



David Corn absolutely shreds a Bush apologist, who rambles conservative talking points, at a book event with Michael Isikoff for Hubris. at a book reading/discussion with Michael Isikoff. By the expression on the faces of audience members as well as Corn and Izikoff, it looks like the guy did not take it well but, being c-span, we don't get to see it.

My guess is that he hurried out in embarrassment, cursed his whole way home and told his wife that he showed those guys, before crying himself to sleep. But I'm only speculating.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

3.41 short video from 10/10/06 and I had not seen this one before.

Mr. Corn makes us proud.



capt

Gerald said...

Lieberman wants the Dems to kiss his ass or he will join the Nazis. He has always been a Nazi.

Gerald said...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/2487

David B. Benson said...

As bad a things are now, it was MUCH worse on May tenth, 2087 BCE, according to today's TNYT Science Times. A tsunami at least 600 feet high...

Now who, again, did you want to send down to the beach?

Saladin said...

David, was that due to global warming? ;-)

capt said...

I WISH I was close enough to the coast to have to worry. Albuquerque is about 5,000 above sea level so it will stay dry.


capt

Gerald said...

Is Bush Clinically Insane

Gerald said...

Why I Dislike America

I do like the word HATE!

Gerald said...

Why I Dislike America

I do like the word HATE!

Gerald said...

The Mystery of Hypocrisy

Gerald said...

Unleashing the Christ Within Us

Gerald said...

I do NOT like the word HATE!

Gerald said...

While there have been a number of viable potential candidates throughout history, Jesus Christ appears to be the obvious choice. While people continue to debate whether he was man, myth or God, few would deny the wisdom and virtue of the teachings attributed to him. His popular appeal and impact on civilization are unprecedented. And one need not subscribe to organized religion or ecclesiastical zealotry to manifest the soul-nurturing principles of Christ.

Gerald said...

The Death of Empathy

Gerald said...

On Death and Democracy

David B. Benson said...

Correction: Burkle Carter in the Indian Ocean was formed by a large meteorite on May 10th, 2807 BCE.

And yes, this was a big enough event that it surely affected the weather for several years...

Gerald said...

America the Temporary

Gerald said...

All you need is love

Gerald said...

America 101

Gerald said...

Connect the dots: Neglected schools, crumbling roads, permanent environmental “dead zones,” inadequate emergency systems, understaffed hospitals, library cutbacks, the lack of affordable housing, incompetent government agencies, whether it is FEMA or state bureaucracies charged with protecting helpless children – these are characteristic features of our public sector today. Partly it’s about money; little noticed amid all the concern about growing deficits and entitlement spending is this fact – non-defense discretionary spending declined 38 percent between 1980 and 1999 as a share of Gross Domestic Product. According to economists Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, federal investment in non-defense capacities, including research and education, plummeted in the 1980s – from over 2.5 percent of GDP to only 1.5 percent in the late 1990s.

A Sea Of Red Ink

The scariest thing is that this is only the beginning. America’s ship of state is floating in a sea of red ink. In an important but largely neglected report in 2002, Kent Smetters and Jagadeesh Gokhale found that our fiscal gap – the difference (in present value) between the government’s future receipts and expenditures – assuming the same net tax rates going forward, was a staggering $45 trillion dollars. This is $4 trillion more than the entire capital stock of industry ($25.9 trillion) and total market capitalization ($14.3 trillion) in 2003.

Gerald said...

Blueprint For Failure

Rub the crystal ball: In the next few decades, when the huge liabilities start coming in due to Social Security and Medicare, there may be nothing left – less than nothing left – for public needs like education, highways, disaster relief, and social services, let alone national healthcare.

Small wonder that the Wall Street investor, Pete Peterson, a life-long Republican who served as President Nixon’s Commerce Secretary, says our children’s future is being ruined by a reckless fiscal “theology.”

Theology asserts propositions that are believed whether or not they meet the test of reality. Not only do our governing elites act as if there’s no tomorrow, they behave as if there is no reality. Alas, they won’t be around to feel our grandchildren’s pain.

Gerald said...

Aristotle thought injustice resulted from pleonexia, literally, “having more.” A class of people having more than their share of the common wealth was the characteristic feature of an unjust society. Plato thought that the common good required a ratio of only 5 to 1 between the richest and poorest members of a society. Even J.P. Morgan thought bosses should only get twenty times more than their workers, at most. How quaint: In 2005 the average CEO earned 262 times what the average worker got.

As hard as it is to believe, the average real weekly wage for blue-collar workers, adjusted for rising costs of living, was about $278 a week in 2004 (in constant 1982 dollars). In 1972, it was $332 a week. That’s not a slight downward trend – it’s a significant and steady decline. So what of the panacea, economic growth – remember the rising tide that lifts all boats? What we are seeing today is closer to the old view of class struggle. A recent Goldman Sachs report says it outright: “The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income.”

Yet in a country where the press now represents the dominant class through an unprecedented concentration of media ownership, instead of this remarkable divergence of profits and wages making news, what grabs the headlines is the triumphal surge of the stock market to old highs. At the same time, the share of Gross Domestic Product going to wages is now at the lowest point since 1947, when the government started measuring things. Those who look fondly on “market discipline” that’s been keeping wages down, ignore the deep distortions built into a system in which capital is highly organized and workers are not.

So it is that to make ends meet in the face of stagnant or declining incomes, regular Americans have gone deeper and deeper in debt – with credit card debt nearly tripling since 1989. Poor kids are dropping out of high school and college at alarming rates, the middle class and working poor have been hit hard by a housing squeeze, 45 million or more Americans – eight out of ten of them in working families – are without health insurance. “The strain on working people,” says the economist Jeffrey Madrick, “has become significant. Working families and the poor are losing ground under economic pressures that deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation, and civic life.”

The American Dream has had its heart cut out, and is on life support.

Gerald said...

The American Dream has had its heart cut out, and is on life support.

Gerald said...

Maybe My Church Leaders Have Seen the Light

Gerald said...

Let me hear a great AMEN!!!

Catholics, though traditionally Democratic voters, have been an increasingly important political constituency for the Republican Party in recent years and helped Bush win reelection in 2004. But this year, Catholics favored Democrats in the midterm elections, according to exit polling.

Gerald said...

Nazi America is the world's leading terrorist nation

Gerald said...

Chainey and Hitler Bush Are Next!

Gerald said...

Voters Have Spoken

Gerald said...

Where Is Jesus Christ in Our Lives

Gerald said...

Bush should be fired

Gerald said...

I am taking some hours off to puke

kathleen said...

More death and destruction in Iraq 650,ooo dead and counting.

While the MSM (NPR, Hardball, Fox, New York Times) evaluates, dissects, ponders, the tragedy that the Bush administration created in Iraq. The "cakewalk, noble lie, creative destruction, Clean (fucking bloody) Break" liars Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Woolsey, Cheney, Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, David and Liv Wurmser etc. etc.) lick their psychopathic chops as they make future plans for securing the realm.


How can anyone wonder why people hate and fear our nation, especially this group of killers who lied us into Iraq. They have no regard for life unless you are an American (from a white collar background) or an Israeli.

The devil needs to add a special locked dungeon for these madmen and women. I do believe in hell, I do I do I do believe in hell.

uncledad said...

Where is Jesus Christ in our lives?
You tell me!
That's a loaded question!
Some people don't believe in J.C.

uncledad said...

2nd big question of the day!

How do we get out of Iraq?

Simple stop making excuses for Zion. Start making solutions for our world. Simple stop making small talk with religion, start solving real problems. Stop feeding the corporate beast, start feeding yourself. Stop being stupid!

uncledad said...

Simple

capt said...

Senate Democrats get tough on Iraq



Two articles in today's Washington Post show the difference the elections made when it comes to Iraq. Democrats on the Armed Services Committee, which will include Jim Webb (D-VA) after he's sworn in, already intend to be very aggressive -- starting today:

Senate Democrats impatient to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq will inject a new political dynamic into the debate over the war beginning today as they question the military's top Middle East commander for the first time since their party swept into control of Congress this month.

Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, will face questions on the violence in Iraq and what it means for the roughly 145,000 U.S. troops there during scheduled testimony today before the Senate Armed Services Committee, senators from both parties said.

Meanwhile, the new Senate Majority Leader made it clear in an interview with the Post that Iraq is THE priority:

But it was on the issue of Iraq that he was most passionate. Voter anger over the war swept his party to power with the unlikely defeat of six Republican senators, he said. Democrats must respond to that anger, he added, with hearings to keep the heat on the Bush administration, and with calls for a regional Middle Eastern conference and a revitalized Iraqi reconstruction effort.

This quote from Reid summed up his perspective:

"Three Americans killed yesterday, four British; 150 Iraqis taken out of that building and kidnapped; 1,800-plus went through that one Baghdad morgue but that doesn't count all the dead," Reid recounted. "My displeasure with the president, he doesn't understand the urgency of this. It's all victory for him, but I don't know what that means anymore in Iraq. I do know what we are doing now doesn't work."

Bush hasn't understood the urgency. Congressional Republicans didn't hold Bush accountable. They enabled him.

This is why elections matter. Even today, two separate articles in the Washington Post outline the Democrat's aggressiveness on Iraq. It just shows the change. And, it shows that these are Democrats with power now.


More HERE

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This is music to my ears. Bring the troops home. We should have never went into Iraq, not in the way we did, not without real support from the international community.



capt

Saladin said...

Don't worry everyone, the nursery rhyme police will soon be here!

Saladin said...

Capt, I am really hoping all this talk is more than just a bunch of hot air. More kabuki theater or the real deal? Please let it be real.

capt said...

I almost hope they lie about everything else - if they would just bring the troops home.

So far, every mention of such action has been a manipulative lie and a troop INCREASE has followed.

Maybe that will change, I sure hope so.


capt

capt said...

New post and thread!

CYA there!

capt